


Invincible

by somanyopentabs



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Angst, F/M, Forehead Kisses, Friends to Lovers, Introspection, Power Imbalance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2653265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somanyopentabs/pseuds/somanyopentabs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after 2.7.  Ginoza is unhappy that Tsunemori is still living in her same apartment.  Tsunemori has a few words of her own for the Enforcer.</p><p>Then continues from the end of Season 2, no movie spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Are you still upset with me?" Inspector Tsunemori asks. Her words are sincere as always. It makes Ginoza cross his arms and refuse to look her in the eye. The notion is ridiculous. As if he had any right to be upset with her.

"No. Of course not." He wants to be telling the truth.

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm not going home tonight." 

"You're staying here?"

She nods. "I don't want to go too far."

The on-call rooms at the PSB are rarely used, but Ginoza doubts that they'll be any less welcoming than Tsunemori's apartment. At least there won't be threatening letters on the wall. He can't imagine how she's stayed there all this time.

"You think you're invincible." And he wants to believe it, too.

She laughs. "No. I know I'm not."

"Well, you should get some rest." He turns away. Before he can escape down the corridor, he feels Tsunemori's hand on his sleeve.

"If only you were as quick to leave when i order you to in the field," she says. Her words are firm.

"What do you mean?" His heart pounds in his chest as he moves to face her. She keeps a hand on his sleeve, only loosening her grip to get a better hold on his wrist.

"I told you to go for your own safety. Who thinks they're invincible?"

Ginoza's mouth is suddenly dry. He looks away from her searching eyes. She won't find what she's looking for in him anyway.

Her grip tightens a fraction more on his wrist. It doesn't hurt, but she is insistent. His other arm, the prosthetic one, hangs uselessly at his side. 

"What do you want me to say?" he asks. "That we disobeyed orders?"

He looks at her, finally. He doesn't know what she wants from him. He'd give her anything that he could. But they have always been different. He's never been as reckless as she has, and he's followed rules since as far back as he can remember. Yes, he disobeyed her orders, but he had reason enough. 

"I'll fill out the disciplinary forms tomorrow," he offers, uncertainty racing across his mind.

"No need. I can't have my Enforcer's hands tied when we need you the most."

He looks down at where her hand is keeping him captive. He could break away easily, most likely with no repercussions.

"Then what do you want from me?"

Tsunemori tugs his arm until he's hunched over close to her height.

"Promise me, if it comes to your own safety, you'll break the rules."

"Tsunemori, I--"

She kisses him on the forehead. "Someday I might tell you something about the Sibyl System. I can't right now, so promise me."

The affection catches him off-guard. Maybe it's the intensity of her stare, or the fact that he's starved for touch, but he agrees. "All right."

She releases him, then, and he straightens up. By the time he gets to his rooms, the thudding of his heart has almost returned to normal.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set post season 2.

Maybe it was the fact that Tsunemori had taken both of his hands in hers, that Ginoza didn’t know what to do with himself.

Both of his hands—one he still has to get used to being his. It’s less like a hand and more of a weapon, sometimes.

Tsunemori doesn’t treat any part of him like a weapon.

There was a time when he’d had the thought of being her shield. He wanted to be useful. He wanted her to need him, to keep him around.

He should have known better. Tsunemori didn’t need a shield.

“What’s wrong?” Tsunemori asked.

He pressed his lips into a thin line as he struggled to reach his words. 

“You haven’t been acting like yourself lately,” Tsunemori continued. She didn’t release his hands.

“Last week,” he said, looking down at the ground while she watched him with steady eyes.

“Hmm?”

“Last week, you called for back-up. I didn’t get there in time.”

“But it all worked out, didn’t it?”

She’d wound up taking down the latent criminal by herself. He was on duty with her. He should have been right there beside her. 

“That’s not the point. I failed you.”

“You followed my orders to follow the other suspect. We couldn’t have known that he’d lead you so far away.”

“I should have—“

“What? Disobeyed my orders? Let a potentially latent criminal wander off while I followed the other one?”

“Tsunemori…”

She tugged on his arms until he followed her over to a desk.

“Sit down,” she said.

He did as told.

“That’s better. Now we can see eye to eye.” She was grinning.

“What are you…?”

“Look at me, please.”

He tilted his head and met her eyes. “Yes?”

“After everything we’ve been through, are you really going to let something like this bother you?”

She was right. Of course she was right. This was such a little thing in comparison to everything else. But too many sleepless nights lately had made his reasoning run thin. He’d been up, worrying.

“You’re right. But I think you should consider that you can’t do so much by yourself. You’re pushing yourself harder and harder. Ever since we lost most of the other divisions…” He finally put into words what was eating away at him.

“We have two new Inspectors in a training class right now.”

“And Enforcers?”

“It’s taking longer than we thought to find new recruits.”

“Tsunemori, there was something I wanted to ask you.”

“Oh?”

“If you’d trust me with it—I’d like to help recruiting new Enforcers.”

“Wouldn’t that put more stress on you?”

“You shouldn’t bear the responsibility alone. We could screen them together.”

Never mind that the system screened potential Enforcers as well. They had both come to a silent agreement that the system couldn’t screen for everything that made someone a good candidate.

Tsunemori bit her lip in thought. “I suppose that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

A ball of stress untangled itself in Ginoza’s chest. He needed to feel like he was doing what was right. For the PSB and Tsunemori. If he could help with getting their divisions fully staffed again, it would take a lot of the pressure off his Inspector.

“You know, it’s late,” Tsunemori said.

“Yes.”

“We’ll talk more about everything tomorrow. Don’t wait for me to corner you before you come tell me what’s on your mind, okay?”

Ginoza nodded.

Tsunemori, who was still standing close to where Ginoza was seated, pressed a soft hand to his cheek before saying goodnight.


	3. Chapter 3

Once, when he had been an Inspector, Ginoza had thought he’d known the role of an Enforcer. But everything that had happened since Tsunemori joined Division 1 had changed his perspective. 

She refused to think of him, or any other Enforcer, as less than her equal. It made thinking about his demotion bearable, for one thing. But it was more than that. 

Things were changing. Attitudes at the PSB were changing. 

Was that really all it took—a bright-eyed rookie who refused to back down at every turn?

“People are starting to talk,” Tsunemori said to him, one day.

“I thought you didn’t care about that sort of thing,” he answered, watching her from under his eyelashes while she hovered over where he was sitting at his desk.

“I don’t care if they say anything bad about me. But have you heard? The new Inspectors from the training class, they’re talking about me like I’m some kind of a legend. I’m only human.”

“You’re one of the few surviving Inspectors since the Kamui incident. It’s only to be expected.”

“I don’t want them to think of me like that. It could end up getting them hurt.”

“So we’ll have more training for them,” he suggested.

“They don’t need to spend more time inside, studying,” Tsunemori countered. “They need to spend time in the field. I don’t want them with the new Enforcers, either. That’s a recipe for disaster. I’m sorry to say this, but I’m going to have to put yourself and Kunizuka with them for a while.”

“Well, you can hardly have them running around without any experience,” he said. But he couldn’t deny the sharp feeling of loss in his chest. He’d been on more and more assignments with Tsunemori lately. Hinakawa was mainly left at the PSB for support, as he and Karanomori worked well together. He only went out in the field if they needed more than one backup. Kunizuka usually worked opposite shifts to Ginoza, so that there would be an experienced Enforcer on call when they needed one.

“Give me your hand,” Tsunemori said.

Ginoza looked up at her, startled. It was the middle of the day, and an odd request. But he offered her up his right hand anyway.

She took it, turning it around and running her thumb over his wrist. “It’s times like these when I most need your support.”

“You know I’m always, whatever I can do…” The way she was touching him made his words trail off without his voice, uncharacteristic of him.

“I know. And I’m grateful for you. And the rest of the team, of course.”

“We’ve been through a lot together. The new recruits, they won’t understand at first.”

“We have a bond,” she said, and her words were sad. Why shouldn’t they be, with all that they’d seen? He wouldn’t have wished for anyone to have to go through what she did in a thousand years. It was too much for one person. Ginoza was seeing a different counselor now, but to his knowledge, Tsunemori wasn’t talking to anyone professional about everything she’d experienced. He wondered if it would be wrong for him to bring it up. Of course, her hue was as clear as ever, but didn’t everyone need someone to talk to?

“Yes. Is it—“ _Am I enough for you? ___He wanted to ask. He wanted to know if she needed more. Was he holding her back? Did she feel obligated to him? “Is it time for lunch?” he said, instead. Sometimes, he was such a coward.

“You’re right. Let’s head up to the cafeteria.” She released his hand, and that was that. 


	4. Chapter 4

“Do you ever think about when we first met?” Tsunemori asked. It was an unexpected question that matched up perfectly with her unexpected visit.

“I try not to,” Ginoza said lightly. He shuffled his feet. He had seen her apartment before as part of an investigation, but this was the first time she had ever entered his living space.

“I was thinking about it earlier. I was thinking about your glasses.”

“I still have them,” Ginoza offered. He wandered over to a cabinet and plucked them out of a drawer.

“Sentimental?”

“Not really.” He’d kept many of his dad’s things for sentimental reasons. The glasses, well. It simply hadn’t occurred to him to get rid of them.

Tsunemori took them and placed them on his face.

“Ah, there you are,” she said.

“Did you like these better?” He shifted his gaze to the floor. She was standing close.

“No, they don’t really suit you, now that I know you don’t need them.” She took the glasses from him again and placed them on herself. “What do you think?”

He smiled. It didn’t matter to him what she looked like. The glasses looked out of place, resting there on the bridge of her nose. But it didn’t matter. 

“You’re in an unprecedented mood today, Inspector.”

“Have you found me out already?” Tsunemori handed the glasses back to him and he put them away. “We finally have a day off together, now that the newbies aren’t so new anymore.”

“They should be watched over, still.”

“Karanomori is taking care of that. She’ll notify me if anything goes wrong.”

“Then you should be enjoying your time off, away from work.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say,” she answered, taking both of his hands in hers and giving them a squeeze. “I’m taking you out as well.”

“Oh,” he said, dumbly. “Where?”

 

~

 

Tsunemori drove them to the city aquarium with one sure hand on the wheel while she checked in with Karanomori.

“We aren’t far away, so be certain to contact me if you need me,” Tsunemori said.

“Of course. We haven’t had an alert all morning,” Karanomori answered. “Kunizuka is also on call."

“I’d like to be notified either way, thanks,” Tsunemori ordered before hanging up.

Ginoza put his hands in his coat pockets as they exited the car and walked up to the building.

“I haven’t been here in a long time,” Tsunemori remarked as they walked through the scanners to enter the exhibits.

“I’ve never.”

“Really? Good, then it will be something new for you. Come on, let’s have a look around.”

The tanks were really quite impressive, in Ginoza’s opinion. While he generally preferred animals that you could pet, the fish were fascinating. It had been a long time since he’d been on an outing merely for pleasure. A parrotfish swam up to the front of the glass and stared back at him with unblinking eyes and bobbing fins.  
“Ginoza, let’s move on to the next room,” Tsunemori suggested after they’d spent some time in the initial exhibit, which had been a coral reef.

He followed her lead, and she gasped softly when they entered through the doorway leading to the next set of tanks. Jellyfish swam, laissez-faire, in tanks that glowed along the walls.

“Do you like them?” he asked. He seemed to recall that her online avatar had been somewhat jellyfish-like in nature.

“Oh, yes. This was always my favorite room,” she answered in a voice that was smaller than usual.

Tsunemori was devastatingly earnest in all that she did. His heart was weak for her, of that he was certain.

Stepping close to the tanks, he was mesmerized by the floating jellies. Normally he might have busied himself with reading the information posted outside each of the tanks, but for once he couldn’t bring himself to be pedantic. 

The movements of the creatures were peaceful, fluttering gently in the water. Ginoza felt as calm as they looked, standing there beside his Inspector. She had reached out to him that day, without any sort of motive that he could know beyond her own kind intentions.

Insecurity couldn’t touch him then, feeling certain that she held him up as an equal, as a friend and a partner. A touch of her hand startled him, and he looked over, somewhat shocked, to realize that he’d met her halfway.

She could hold his hand, and let him hold hers right back.


End file.
